Curtain Call
by Daidan-grrl
Summary: After 'Chosen' and definately NOT For Spoiler-Phobes


Author: Bree the Daidan_grrl Rating: it's all speculation Spoilers: If you like hearsay and conjecture- then I'm your gal. If you don't want to think of what may be. please skip over.  
  
*looks down page*  
  
Bree: Oi lads, anyone planning on spoiling something?  
  
Spike: Wouldn't you like to know.  
  
Xander: Sure, why not. Not like I could see it coming now.  
  
Disclaimer and General Groveling: I swear, none of it's mine. Not the people, not the places, not the way Spike's coat just hangs from those fantastic shoulders, don't sue. I'm broke. Grr. Arg. Feedback: batting eyelashes much appreciated at daidan@hotmail.com, please put CURTAIN CALL- COMMENTS in the subject so I can weed between the junk mail! Oh, also I wish upon a star to someday find a kind beta-minded soul. Just saying.  
  
Curtain Call.  
  
"This is how it is meant to be." Lou, a demon (so it said on a name tag which also read "Adjustment Counselor") had smirked sadly when saying this, slapping his ass on the way through the unholy wasteland that had swallowed Sunnydale and all it's remnants.  
  
"Hell."  
  
"That's the popular name now-" the demon flickered into a man. Or a man shaped thing with perfect features and wide dark wings. And a pleased, lazy smile, "I liked it better when folks up there were still talking about 'The Pit of Dark and Coiling Evil.' Had a nice ring."  
  
No sap left for sarcasm or wit. Not when the ghosts of little girls screaming and stabbing and bleeding their lives into the nighttime floated above him, literally because here that thing could happen. Oh god, the girls.  
  
Her army (and She was such a fierce and frightened leader) made of children, like those crusades the old timers always went on about. He hoped none of them followed him down here- though he thought he had seen the wrung face of the scared little one with the strawberry hair and rainbow sweaters. Under the battle grime and old blood he tasted tears and looked away.  
  
There was no reason for him to hide his face here- all those memories were soaked into the air (if Hell had air) and played out for all to see. Lou had helped him up off the brimstone and dusted the leather jacket off only moments after the end, welcomed him to the Pit with a cruise director's smile. He had taken the pale and filthy hand in his little claws and shook fiercely as if he was meeting Jack Kennedy. who he was sure he had seen strung against a wall in pieces screaming. but maybe his eyes were tired.  
  
Things would take a lot of getting used to around here.  
  
Tall as his hip and hideous as anything in Clem's bar, the demon had fluttered the bony rags at his back and dragged the newcomer along huge cathedral halls.  
  
"This isn't what I thought it was gonna to be like." His voice rasped across a dry tongue. Everything here was nothing like the sermons, the old legends, or the movies had threatened (or promised, depending on how you took them). Even the place that nancy boy had whined about being stuck in for 500 years didn't hold up to the distinct oddness of the actual place.  
  
"It's all in the company charter, even the bits about iron pokers and eternal torture."  
  
"Isn't someone supposed to peel my skin off or something wicked like that?"  
  
Lou the Adjustment Counselor glanced down at a clipboard in his paw and shook his head. "Not our department."  
  
He had been soaked in sweat and post-apocalyptic disbelief then, had accepted the goblet of blood but set it aside when the slow and deliberate explanations came.  
  
"Really, we admire you. You managed to snatch an entire prophesy from the intended champion."  
  
He blushed then, looked away because he wasn't sure how admirable it was to snatch sullen, poncy Angel's purpose away. And then he remembered where he was. They love that ironic shit down here- or so rumor had it.  
  
"Go, Slayer."  
  
The earth heaved with the bucking force of the Hellmouth, his skin already ash in the light of The Champion's Amulet. Buffy, a torn and fierce warrior, gripped the open wound in her side and yet was able to hold onto him harder than anything he had ever felt.  
  
"Spike-"  
  
"Pet, your world is gonna change in a couple of minutes- I think mine is rather set-" and he nodded down to the ash and skin that was flaking from his arms. She choked a gutteral sob, gave him the sickly ends of a brave smile and ran into the day  
  
"I wanna see how it all ends."  
  
Daylight. How it burned.  
  
"Like I said at the campaign meeting last week- this had to be spectacular. I mean, we've had those close calls, but like I always say: if you're going to do it, do it right." The stump of a tail wagged.  
  
"Blew the budget for at least three hundred years, but it was worth it."  
  
He had found his voice at the bottom of a very deep pit then, barely filling the space in front of him in the massive chamber woven of blood and screams. "But it won't ever stop."  
  
Lou scrambled up onto the throne and threw his legs over an armrest.  
  
"You aren't wrong, kid. We're forever going over budget, trying to top the other guy, trying to keep folks interested, trying to market to our demographic."  
  
"Where does the surplus come from." He was tired- he didn't care.  
  
"Business is good. We have an unlimited supply of our best selling product."  
  
Men. Lou didn't say it, but Spike knew. He had spent a century as a product rep for the Company and hadn't even known.  
  
New screams. Yes, Rona was here. Where was Drusilla, where was Darla and all the others? Why wasn't he with them?  
  
There was no more pain here, after the vampires and corporeal evils had rent and torn and killed those tender children. The youngest one, Amanda. she fell quickly. Others taken apart or beaten or broken.  
  
Anya.  
  
He bit his tongue and tasted copper. The ex demon had been a whirl of swords and arms; she had fought with strength and fell in pieces to the ground with a firm look of satisfaction. Xander might just be finding out now as they drove at break neck speeds away from California with the survivors.  
  
Why wasn't he with them?  
  
"Honestly, no idea, bud. You're not marked for re-distribution and you're not supposed to stick around here." The forked tongue slid over beautiful lips, "We would have put you in charge of a department, made you a VP."  
  
The place where his amulet had burned away to a scar of thick white flesh still throbbed. This was his pink slip. Fired from Hell.  
  
"We like to think of it as down-sizing to better estimate new consumer demands."  
  
"Always a market for evil I guess, innit?"  
  
A dog stalked into the room, a great huge mastiff with bleeding chops and foamy sweat on its flanks. It flicked a bored glare and snarled somewhere in the caverns of its throat. The CEO and President of Hell swatted it away, dark fingers working though the hackles along the back of his pet's neck and laughed. "Here's what I'm gonna do for you, bud. I'm going to sign you out of here, validate that soul of yours and get you back upstairs for the next round."  
  
"Why Me." Everything was gone; he had nowhere to go and no one to love. Death had his hands full up there. All Spike would have would be nights of tracking a scent. her scent. She was gone, even if she was alive. He'd rather stay down here.  
  
"Ha. Pardon the cliché- but the hell you will. In a couple of hours, the Other Guy is sending a soccer mom in a minivan along route 80, see that she sees you. Her name will be. oh lets make her an Anne."  
  
"But how does this tie into Hell?"  
  
"It doesn't. You're out of the loop Billy- can I call you Billy?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Bill, you're working for the Other Guy now. Or at least, he's got all your files. We took your teeth, gave you back you stomach- consider it a buy out. You haven't been a decent vampire for four or five years."  
  
A bass growl rippled along the Hell Hounds gums from its place at the foot of the throne just to show him how bad he had been. Lou, the man shaped Lou and not the charming if idiosyncratic little Disney demon-guide he had been before pursed his lips sternly.  
  
"You're a man Bill. You're out of the game."  
  
And then he was buried, digging, scratching with aching muscles at the hard- packed soil as Lou went on in his confident pitch:  
  
"You see slugger, the problem with you is that you used to fit our plan. You were, well, you. William the Bloody was great for business and he kept our competition guessing. Now you've gone and sold out, and our competition couldn't be happier."  
  
There were rocks that chipped at his fingernails, tore tender skin and made his eyes water.  
  
Water?  
  
He couldn't breath. He couldn't see. All he could do was scrape and reach. As the echoes of death faded from his ears an unfamiliar shriek picked up. Life. Need.  
  
There is no sound in the earth, something he discovered when climbing up from deep down. His hands dug mouthfuls of earth from the dark dirt sky above, scooping and pushing with pained sweeps.  
  
The earth became dry; broke into pieces and roots and ash. From the crust a slow white hand reached up through the wreckage of what had been. Pain, real pain lanced through arms and torso as he drew himself out of the scorched ground and cleared a place for his eyes to see.  
  
He did not die he did not burn. Instead as he sagged weary and drained in the desert of dust and ashes, dragged bleeding fingers across hot and damp flesh. as his palm stopped to rest on the flat plain of left chest to feel a peculiar yet familiar feeling somewhere underneath purple and white skin.  
  
In the bright banishing light of a California morning there was a heavy sign laying a wreck in the dirt: "Welcome To Sunnydale"  
  
And scrawled across the bottom: "LA- 30 MILES"  
  
Spike the man who could not cry or shout or mourn anymore today laughed.  
  
And he laughed.  
  
What else can a man do on a nice summer day but lie in the sun? 


End file.
